I’ve made it back home to Tampa for the holidays, so naturally the first thing I did was started baking in the kitchen. Does anyone else have a hard time picking out recipes? I spent an hour today just looking for different recipes to bake. I sat down around 11am… By the time I went to the store to get ingredients and came back to cook, it was 1pm!

One recipe that was easy to decide on baking was this coffee cake. It has all the Christmas-y flavors you want in a morning pastry (is it a pastry? No, but I can’t think of a better word)

This cake is from Joy the Baker… a great breakfast recipe to serve company. I gifted this to my friends and their family- the colors make it look fancy! The orange zest and juice taste amazing contrasted with the tart cranberries.

Place a rack in the center of the oven and preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Grease a 9×5-inch loaf pan. Line loaf pan with parchment paper, leaving a few inches of overhang on each side. Grease the parchment paper and dust with flour on all sides. Set aside.

In a large bowl, whisk together flour sugar, baking powder, baking soda, and salt. Add chunks of butter and work the butter into the flour with your fingers. Try to blend the butter into each bit of the dry ingredients. The mixture will resemble a coarse meal.

Add the wet ingredients all at once to the dry ingredients. Stir together to incorporate. Add the cranberries and pecans and fold into the batter.

To make the topping combine all of the ingredients in a bowl and rub together with your fingertips until crumbly.

Divide the batter between the two loaf pans. Sprinkle each loaf with topping. Place in the oven and allow to bake until the cake is golden brown and the center is cooked through. Insert a skewer into the center of the cake to ensure that it’s cooked through, about 50 to 60 minutes.

Remove from the oven and allow to cool in the pans for 15 minutes. Use the parchment paper to life the loaves from the pan and allow to cool further on a wire rack.

For the glaze I whisked together 1 cup of powdered sugar and just over a tablespoon of milk. I drizzled it over the cooled coffee cake.

Cake can be stored, well wrapped at room temperature, for up to 5 days.